


Don't Think About It

by NeoAsh



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ATLA Big Bang 2020, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, reflecting on your broken family and going 'wtf', sibling relationships, thinking about better days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27308755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoAsh/pseuds/NeoAsh
Summary: Zuko watches a very pretty sunset on Ember Island. He's not happy about it. Mostly because he starts remembering all the times he and Azula weren't trying to kill each other, and it's really bumming him out.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 52
Collections: ATLA Big Bang 2020





	Don't Think About It

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is a part of the ATLA Big Bang 2020!

[Art Here!](https://flydunes.tumblr.com/post/633515389302800384/id-a-traditional-drawing-depicting-zuko-and)

The sun setting on the horizon, just barely kissing the water, is beautiful. It paints the water below in swathes of orange, red, and pink, then extends its colored touch to the dark sand in a way that is breathtaking. The entire beach, for this one suspended moment in time, looks like a watercolor and feels like a dream.

Zuko hates it. Overlooking the beach makes his breath catch, but it’s a wholly unpleasant sensation. He feels like all the air has been knocked from his lungs. The very source of his fire put on pause because of the scenery. It’s unacceptable. He feels vulnerable.

He hates suspended moments in time. The dreamlike, time slowing effect presses on his skin like a tangible weight. It makes his heart race and his bones ache with an oncoming feeling of dread. Zuko loves the theater, loves his friends, loves the turtleducks when they swim and fire when it pulses. There is beauty in motion, and the beach right now is the opposite; entirely and eerily still. Frozen in time in a way that locks Zuko in place as well, helpless to the moment and the rest of the world. Even if it is only for an instant, it’s an endless instant, and Zuko, again, hates it.

Stillness is not associated with lovely things. Stillness has only ever been the result of aftermath. Aftermath of another lesson not learned fast enough, well enough, to avoid the judgmental stares that followed Zuko even when Father had long since left to spend his time on something more important. Stillness sometimes hung in the air as a companion to suffocating silence once the fighting was over, once punishment was over, and the only thing that moved was Zuko’s too fast heartbeat. Stillness settled over him after he was finally thrown away like he was always going to be.

As he got older, to his present shame, still silence became the aftermath of Zuko’s own violent temper.

The point is that moments suspended in time are unpleasant and unwelcome to Zuko. They are almost without fail moments in which he would give anything to move on as quickly as possible, and yet they demand he languish in still silence that coarsely drags across his skin like sandpaper.

The beach of Ember Island is beautiful at sunset. Zuko cannot breathe and cannot move and cannot wonder at why a sunset of all things is having this effect on him. All he knows is the coolness of the ground below him and the heat of indignity in his veins.

As quickly as it happened, the moment is over. Zuko’s free. He looks away.

Once he is no longer suspended, once he takes a moment to breathe again, Zuko looks again. There is no reason to get mad at a beach for being pretty, so he tries to think of why he might be. Because he is, he’s angry and almost choking on hatred that makes him soul-sick, yet he doesn’t know why because it’s just a dumb landscape.

He’s grown a lot since he was wholly Ozai’s, but he’s got a long way to go, and that unfortunately means a lot more introspection than he’s comfortable with. Zuko wants to be good though, so he tries to come up with reasons to hate the beach.

He thinks for a few minutes, tries for a few more, then collapses to the ground in frustration. Call him dramatic, but Zuko thinks sprawling on his back is a perfectly reasonable and restrained reaction. Every pass at self-reflection gets more and more ridiculous the longer he tries. It’s not because the water brings up any bad memories- the opposite happens, really. There are no clouds to remind him of worse days spent watching for any sign of Appa. The sun is a comfort more than anything. He cannot think of anything to do with the beach itself that would cause the now bitter, hollow feeling that is taking up space in his chest.

He tries to think if there is something about how beautiful the beach is that makes him angry. Maybe about how beautiful he is not anymore. Zuko might be oblivious to many things, but his mother was a politician and a gorgeous woman; he knows all about using attractiveness to one’s advantage, and he knows that the royal family has always been blessed in physical beauty. Ugly on the inside more often than not perhaps, but pretty on the outside. Except Zuko, who is branded and will never be handsome again.

That doesn’t feel right though. Feels pretty silly, honestly. Zuko wonders if he’s been listening to Sokka try to flatter Suki with bad poetry for too long. Maybe overheard him wax poetic about the moon too much. Either way, Zuko blames Sokka and moves on.

The longer Zuko looks over the beach, the less it resembles a painting. There are waves that crash against the shore, and the places they aren’t are where the riptides lay in wait. The sun sinks slowly down, lower in the sky than it was when Zuko first walked outside. The sand glitters in the low light, casting odd shadows that shift in moving patterns. Dusk has not stilled into a single image on the beach. It moves and lives like everywhere else. Zuko still doesn’t like it.

Is it ridiculous to feel like nature is trying to show off? Yes. Is Zuko going to do it anyway? Also yes.

The feeling reminds him of Azula, quite frankly. Beautiful in a way that seems effortless, pleasing and perfect in every way, but always with the understanding that imperfection will have dire consequences. If Ember Island did not raise so many funds through tourism, the military would find a way for it to be more useful, beauty be damned. If Azula was not a picturesque princess, she would be discarded just as swiftly as Zuko.

Finding ways for Ember Island to remind him of Azula is as ridiculous as finding ways for it to remind him of himself, but here Zuko is doing just that.

More frustratingly, Zuko firmly does not want to think about Azula right now, but now that the thought is in his head it’s impossible to get it out again. Azula is like that though, always forcing her way into places she shouldn’t.

The irony of that thought will not strike him for a long while.

Zuko’s feelings about Azula are… complicated. When first escaping the Boiling Rock, he felt overjoyed at beating her. It was overshadowed almost instantly by worry for Mai, but it had been there. A firework of pride and satisfaction that Zuko had gotten one over on Azula. Then he spent time seeing Sokka and Katara interact with Hakoda, and he wondered. He saw Sokka and Katara fight about petty things and be back to playful teasing within the same conversation. He saw them truly fight about their mother, and by the next day they were okay again. It was… it is baffling. Zuko doesn’t understand.

Some days he thinks he might be able to. Those are the days where he and Toph spend time together. Days when he and Aang are especially in sync. Days where the world still feels heavy, but his friends lighten the load in the same way Uncle used to.

Zuko can’t connect those kinds of nice thoughts to Azula though. He wants to win, wants to triumph over her, in retaliation for all the times she’s done the same to him. He will have to win against her if he wants to help save the world.

He has to admit that the thought of beating Azula does not fill him with excitement like it used to. It almost feels hollow. Zuko has so far chalked it up to missing Uncle; his only real family will probably want nothing to do with him even if he finds him, so Zuko’s foolish heart is trying to save any last family connection he has, even if the drive for retribution has not completely faded.  
Ember Island makes it hard to believe that. This place, this beach, drags up memories half-forgotten and better left untouched. Sitting here on the ground, overlooking the sand, ocean, and painted sky- trying to self-reflect and failing- Zuko remembers.

He remembers when Azula was two. Their family had just finished dinner, and the adults were all talking of courtly matters that flew above his and Azula’s heads. His sister had demanded that he play with her until nightfall. She said it was only fair, since Big Brother had played all afternoon with Lu Ten instead of her, he has to play with her all evening instead of with Lu Ten. Zuko remembered smiling at her and agreeing. It had been true, after all. He and Lu Ten had spent hours swimming together, playing in water too deep for Azula to keep herself afloat in.

So, in the light of the setting sun, Zuko and Azula chased each other across the beach. At first in long straight lines, fast and frenetic after dinner. Then, a bit slower, chasing each other around and around in circles. Later, when the sun was almost completely gone, they made only the most necessary lunges and dodges, weighed down by fatigue. Azula refused to stop though, sleepily toddling after Zuko until she was declared the winner.

Zuko remembers he slowed down enough for Azula to knock him over and laughed as they both fell to the ground. Two-year-old Azula did not have any malicious gleam in her eye, only childish happiness as Zuko told her she was definitely the best. He told her that she was the most fun to play with, even if she did win, and she looked entirely too satisfied when she sleepily curled up against him.  
It’s the kind of summer day that should be completely lost to Zuko since he was so young, but he remembers because of this; the contentment in his bones after such a good day, the sight of Lu Ten looking at them fondly from where he was supervising in the sand, the feeling of Azula on top of him happy and safe. That moment, one of his only cherished suspended moments of time, was the happiest that Zuko had ever felt. It was the happiest that Zuko would feel for a very long time.

Zuko sits up when he hears steps coming toward him. He looks to his right to see Sokka walking over and raises a hand in greeting. Sokka grins at him.

“Hey man, whatcha thinkin’ about?”

“Well I got angry at a sunset, and while I was trying to figure out why on earth that was happening I ended up thinking about Azula,” he says miserably. Sokka’s grin turns into a grimace and he plops down next to Zuko with a soft thud.

“Oof,” Sokka replies. “That’s rough.”

“Mm,” Zuko hums unhelpfully. He moves to wrap his arms around his knees, then lifts his head to go back to staring at the ocean. Sokka, who does not enjoy being ignored, pokes him in the shoulder until Zuko slides his eyes back to the water tribe boy.

“So you’re hiding out here to think about sunsets and Crazy Blue? Well then, being the magnanimous man I am, I will help you come up with something better to think about.”

“I’m not hiding!” he snaps. Then more quietly adds, “Don’t call her that.”

Sokka seems caught off guard. He blinks at the firebender, picking up that something is truly bothering Zuko, but confused as to what. “Don’t call…Azula ‘Crazy Blue’ you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Why though? You’ve been hearing us call her that for weeks, what’s got you so defensive about that whack job all of a sudden?” Sokka doesn’t ask it unkindly, but it’s exactly annoying enough to make Zuko wish he would go away. Zuko doesn’t know why he’s thinking of Azula as the sister he loved instead of Ozai’s weapon all of a sudden. She may be both of those things, but only one of them matters until the war is over. Unfortunately, it’s not the one that feels most important right now.

“I- I just- just not right now! I said not right now, so don’t.”

“Dude,” Sokka starts. Zuko glares at him, but Sokka just rolls his eyes. “C’mon man, you can’t expect me to drop it now. You’re out here scowling at the beach like it personally offended you, apparently thinking about Azula, and now you’re all touchy about a dumb nickname. What is going on? Talk to me.”

Zuko decides then and there that Sokka is terrible. He comes out here while Zuko is trying to sort out the mess in his head, and now he’s definitely not leaving until his curiosity is sated. He also has no concept of personal space and has deemed it perfectly acceptable to get all up in Zuko’s, since after his command to talk he scoots as close to the firebender as is humanly possible without being in his lap. It’s annoying, and endearing, and even more annoying for being endearing. Zuko hates that he doesn’t hate it at all.

Zuko takes a calming breath. He stares at the ocean. Sokka waits patiently, because against all common sense he’s stupidly good at waiting out his opponents when he needs to.

Zuko thinks of another memory. One where he and Azula are older, but Ozai is not Firelord yet. They swam together in that ocean, holding races every so often, but not as much as one would think. Azula is better than Zuko at most things, but she has never been the stronger swimmer between them, and she hated being reminded of that fact too much. Instead, they figured out how to do flips, and had splash fights, and saw how long they could hold their breaths.

The sun was high in the sky, and the two of them were playing ‘water versus fire’ where Azula, gallant soldier of the Fire Nation, swiped at Zuko the waterbender with a piece of driftwood designated her ‘sword’. She would swipe and throw sparks, he would splash her and swim a few paces away, and their mother would shake her head at them from under her beach umbrella. It wasn’t Zuko’s favorite game since he almost always had to be the waterbender, even though he was the one with actual swordsmanship lessons, but it was still fun. They were young enough that Zuko still delighted in hearing Azula laugh more than he did winning.

Zuko did not say any of this to Sokka. Instead, he says, “My sister is only fourteen.”

Sokka doesn’t reply to him for a while. Then, a bit haltingly asks, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Zuko confirms. He wants to raise an eyebrow at the reaction, but gets an answer to the unasked question a second later.

“Katara is fourteen.” Sokka says it like it’s significant somehow. It takes a moment, but Zuko gets it. Sokka loves his sister, and she loves him right back with a fierceness that still kind of scares Zuko. It must be weird to know that your sister who’s a trusted teacher of the avatar is the same age as a major player for the other side. It’s certainly uncomfortable for Zuko to think about how the fate of the world will be decided by a bunch of kids.

“I…” Zuko doesn’t want to finish the thought. It’s been lingering since he first started thinking about Azula, but saying it out loud, admitting it in front of a witness no less, will make it feel too real. It will be a tangible thing, instead of something he can ignore like it isn’t there.

“Go on,” Sokka encourages gently. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, telling Sokka. Of everyone in their little group, Zuko thinks Sokka would understand the best. After all, Katara is fourteen with the world on her shoulders, but Sokka can shoulder it with her, and that means something. Katara might take it for granted that Sokka is there to help her, but he knows for a fact that Sokka almost never takes for granted that they’ve still got each other.

“I miss my sister,” Zuko whispers. Sokka backs up so he doesn’t nail Zuko in the jaw when he whips around to face him. Zuko doesn’t look at him, staring at the see as his confession buzzes in the space between them. Sokka grabs him by the shoulder and makes Zuko look at him.

Sokka looks alarmed when Zuko finally meets his eyes. He doesn’t think his friend would be worried about disloyalty, but he tries his best to dispel that concern anyway. It’s the only thing he can think of that would make Sokka look at him so worriedly.

“I know Azula has to be stopped. She’s his,” Zuko looks down as he chokes on nothing. He rushes to say, “Azula is all his, I know, but she wasn’t always, not completely. Azula is…Azula, but I-” He straightens to look Sokka dead in the eye with sudden urgency, and says with startling intensity, “I miss _my sister,_ Sokka.”

Suddenly, Zuko is on the ground. He lost his balance when Sokka tackle hugged him like a maniac. Zuko can’t say it’s a bad reaction, but it’s certainly weird and not what Zuko expected.

“Umm…” Zuko says eloquently.

Sokka shushes him and squeezes tighter.

“Sokka,” Zuko deadpans. Sokka shuffles a little lower so that his head rests of Zuko’s chest and looks at him.

“Zuko, buddy…” he trails off. Sokka averts his eyes and tries again. “I forget, I think we all forget, how personal this must be for you. It’s easy to just kinda think of the royal family as a posse of pure evil instead of like, a family.”

“To be fair,” Zuko says blandly. “We’re not much of a family. I didn’t really know that until embarrassingly recently, but it’s true. We haven’t been a family in a long time.”

Sokka crawls off of him. He crosses his arms and pouts at Zuko. “That does not make it better, jerk. That makes it even sadder.”

“I wasn’t trying to make it better,” Zuko grumbles to himself. He sits up and looks at Sokka, who is still pouting. Zuko closes his eyes and resists the urge to chase him away with fire. Sokka seems to pick up on the fact that his teasing is not well received right now because when Zuko opens his eyes, Sokka is an almost respectable distance away and his expression is serious.

“Hey,” Sokka says.

Zuko eyes him warily.

“You said things used to be better, right? Tell me about it.”

“Tell you…about my family when things were better?”

“Yeah!” Sokka says brightly. “Tell me about your sister.”

Zuko considers it for a heartbeat. He really does, because Sokka is his friend, and everyone is always saying that talking about things makes people feel better.

“Azula is my sister, but she’s nothing but an enemy to you. Why are trying to learn useless information about her when we have more important things to think about?”

“I have no qualms about fighting her. Hearing about the kind of kid she was isn’t going to change that. I’m not asking as a strategist, or her enemy.” Sokka’s expression softens. “I’m asking you to tell me about your sister, because you miss her, and I wanna know about the people who are important to my friend. So c’mon, tell me some stuff.”

Zuko looks at Sokka. Really looks at him, and he feels himself give in to the other boy’s request. His thoughts are muddled and his heart hurts. He wants to stop thinking about Azula. He misses her, the her who wasn’t great at swimming and liked to play in the sand. He answers Sokka.

“She liked to build sandcastles.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Instead of a teenager who crushed sandcastles under her heel, Zuko thinks of a child who built up piles of wet sand and lovingly crafted palaces fit for a princess. At first, below average blobs built with tiny hands. Then better and better structures until Azula could build a sandcastle that was big enough for her to walk inside. On one memorable occasion, Uncle Iroh helped her with her sandcastle, and they looked like they were having a good time. It was right before the campaign for Ba Sing Se. According to his sister later that night, Uncle had spent the day playing invasion with her, teaching her siege tactics and battle strategies that were much more fun to learn about than the lessons she took at Academy. The next day, Zuko had found patches of glass where they had thrown fire a little too zealously at the invisible Earth Kingdom soldiers. It was one of the only times Zuko could remember Azula and Uncle getting along.

“What else?” Sokka asks.

Zuko looks around. The sun has slipped even lower, more than halfway beneath the horizon. The water is dark with only splashes of red lingering. The sand is probably cool by now. He looks at the cliffs.  
“Lu Ten taught me how to cliff dive, but I taught Azula,” he offers. Sokka tilts his head in confusion.

“Who is Lu Ten?” Zuko’s eyes widen. He didn’t know…did any of them know? Why would they, though? Toph might know but she would’ve been really young when the crown prince’s son died in Ba Sing Se. She’d met Uncle though, but hadn’t she said Uncle talked about Zuko? Agni above, none of them knew.

Should he…? Did it matter? There’s no reason to withhold the information. No reason except that Sokka might want to talk about Lu Ten instead. Cousin Lu Ten was incredible. He was skilled, fierce, and intelligent. He was also kind. He was a loving cousin who treated Zuko well and encouraged his interest in the dual Dao. There was a lot to love about Lu Ten, and a lot that Zuko could say about him.  
Zuko does not want to talk about Lu Ten. As much as he misses him, it was an old hurt smoothed over by time. So much had happened after his death that Zuko still hasn’t processed. He misses Lu Ten, but his cousin is dead. His sister is very much alive, but entirely unreachable, and he misses her in a way that hurts sharply. Sokka is still looking at him, waiting for an answer. Zuko decides to give only the barest of explanations.

“Lu Ten was my cousin. Was. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sokka blinks but rallies quickly enough. He nods his head in a gesture that tells Zuko to continue, though the flash in his eyes tells Zuko that he is only saving his curiosity for another time.

“Anyway,” Zuko says awkwardly. “I taught Azula how to dive from the cliffs.”

“Did she argue with you a lot?” Sokka asked.

“What?”

“Well, whenever I tried to teach Katara how to do anything she would constantly argue about it. Like, in the Southern Water Tribe, we live in igloos, but in the Summer the snow would melt, and we’d move to the summer camp. We have tents sewn from animal skins, and we’d have to secure the frame into the ground so that it didn’t get carried away by the wind or fall over when it rained. Katara, absolute ‘perfect angel’ that she was, messed it up for the first three Summers she tried to help. All because when I tried to show her the right angle to put in the supports, she would insist ‘no Sokka, you idiot, I know how to do it’ blah blah blah.”

Sokka gives Zuko a look of exasperated fondness and says, “Zuko, pal, she did not know how to do it. She pointed the frame inward every single time, and we had to redo it when she wasn’t looking. I love her, but she is impossible to teach- always has to figure out how to do things the hard way, y’know?”

Zuko tilts his head in consideration. He thinks of how he walked Azula through the dive, then watched her first try with critical eyes. Thinks of how when he told her to snap her hips a little faster, she threw a fireball at him.

“Yeah, I think I know,” he answers wryly.

Sokka rapidly pokes him in the arm. “Hey, hey, hey, heyyyyy Zuko.”

Zuko slaps his hands away and growls, “What?”

“Tell me a story.”

“I am an awful storyteller. You know this. Aren’t we talking about our sisters? Why would I tell you a story?”

Sokka shakes his head at him. “My guy, tell me a story about your sister.”

Well that’s even more ridiculous. He might be feeling kinder toward Azula than usual, but those memories are single images that he only has the briefest context for. Azula curled up on top of him after a long game of tag. The ring of laughter after he splashed her. Azula breaking the surface of the water after her first dive, the two of them with matching beaming smiles. Zuko already doesn’t have the best storytelling skills, but scattered memories of a little girl who doesn’t exist anymore hardly make a good basis for a plotline.

“If I tell you a story about Azula, it won’t be a nice one. We had short intervals of getting along, nothing exciting enough to get a story out of.”

Sokka looks a little sad about that, and Zuko would like to reassure him that it’s fine because that’s just how it is, but he refrains because Zuko realizes he himself feels a little sad about that. There’s a lot of lost time they’re probably never going to make up for, and here, looking out at the beach and thinking about things that should’ve been unremarkable but aren’t, Zuko dares to wonder if things really didn’t have to sour between. If Father hadn’t so blatantly pitted them against each other (if Mother had supported both of them) then maybe Zuko and Azula could have loved each other like Sokka and Katara. Like little Lee from the Earth Kingdom loved his older brother.

Wishful thinking never got Zuko anywhere though, so he shakes his head to clear the thought away and tries to think of something else to offer instead.

“When… once when I came to Ember Island with just Lu Ten to learn about exports, I spent one evening collecting seashells and sea glass that had washed up on the shore and in the tide pools. I had Cousin help me tie them together to make a crown for Azula. She was angry that I got to leave the Capital and she had to stay to attend her Academy classes. All I really did was carry Lu Ten’s stuff for him because I didn’t really need to be there either, but I got to do something she didn’t and Azula’s always hated that. So, I picked up whatever shiny things I saw on the ground and put them on a string, and when we got home, I gave it to Azula to make her feel better. Lu Ten put it on her head and said it was pretty enough for a princess, but Azula said it was dumb.”

Sokka looked like he was about to say something, probably in defense of the stupid beach crown, but Zuko cut him off.

“It was dumb. Later though, I saw it on her dresser. If she really didn’t want it, she would have just incinerated it, but she didn’t, so she liked it at least a little.”

“Your family is so messed up. Who incinerates stuff they don’t like? Why not just hide it from sight and avoid looking at it, but never throwing it away because you would feel guilty about it? That’s what normal people do!”

“That…is a normal thing to do? You think that’s more normal than just getting rid of something you don’t like?”

“Okay fine! Maybe that’s not a normal thing to do either, but haven’t you ever heard of regifting? If you don’t want something give it to someone else. That’s a lot less wasteful than just setting it on fire.”

“What if it has no practical value though? Burning it means it’s not taking up space.”

“N- okay, you know what? We are getting off topic. Are you feeling any better now that you’ve talked about what's on your mind?”

Zuko took some time to think about how he was feeling. He certainly didn’t feel good about his broken sibling relationship, but he supposed he did feel better than when he first came outside, unreasonably angry at the sunset of all things.

Zuko looks back toward the house. He thinks of a hand extended in the aftermath. A fleeting connection only offered away from prying eyes. Zuko had been trapped in an endless moment, surrounded by ashes. Azula had told him to come back with her.

It was an unremarkable and unlasting connection, but not meaningless. Zuko refuses to call it meaningless, not after spending an entire sunset remembering.

“I feel better. It’s just- I hate that I can’t help her.” Zuko doesn’t know why he says it, but once he does he realizes it’s true.

“You might be able to. After this is all over,” Sokka says softly.

“Sokka.”

Concerned blue eyes meet somber gold.

“Sokka…” Zuko clears his throat and tries again. “Whatever the final battle looks like, another loss will break her. All she knows how to be is a weapon.”

“That can’t be true, you just told me that she used to care about other things.”

“Yeah, used to. Sokka, that was a long time ago. You don’t… even she thinks that she’s a monster.”

Sokka’s eyes widen in what looks like horror. “She…”

“Part of me hopes that in the aftermath, she’ll let me help put the pieces back together, but even if she did it’s not like I’d be much help anyway.”

“Hey don’t say that—”

“I can’t even help myself,” Zuko grits out. “Azula- my sister needs real help. I can’t give her that. I don’t know who can, but that’s a problem for after.”

“Zuko-“

“Please,” he says, putting his head in his hands. “I don’t...I don’t want to think about it. This entire thing has just been a long, exhausting waste of time and I would like to go back inside.”

He doesn’t hear Sokka reply, so Zuko looks back up. He can’t tell what expression he’s making because he's not facing Zuko. He's looking out at the water. The firebender is at a loss for how his friend is feeling, but he doesn’t like it and he still feels hollow, so he puts his head back down in his hands.

"When Katara was twelve," Sokka starts. Zuko startles, not expecting it, and sits straight up to look at him. When he's settled, Sokka clears his throat.

"When Katara was twelve we had a fight. A really nasty one. Usually, I'm sure you know by now, but usually we fight about stupid little things. About whose turn it is to use the bath first, or whose turn it is to do the dishes, or which one of us is more annoying. This one fight though, it might be the worst one we ever had. It was right after our father left to fight in the war. We had no responsible adults around except for Gran-Gran, and she's old. It's not easy to handle two kids when it's hard to walk around, y'know? So mostly we were unsupervised. We both tried pretty hard to pretend we were old enough to be our own adults even though neither of us were even of age yet, but we tried so hard and it didn't go well at all because our parents were gone and the war was still going on and everyone was on edge."

Zuko stares at Sokka as he weaves his tale. He wouldn't know what to say even if it was expected of him. The water sibling don't talk about the hard parts of Water Tribe life, not unless it's someone's temper boiling over and it's remarked upon in the heat of the moment. Zuko wonders why Sokka is telling him this, softly and slowly in the dying light of dusk, but he can't help but give him his utmost attention.

"Everyone was on edge after our men left. Then on night, maybe a week after, I dropped a bucket of water. I don't even remember what it was for, but I remember the clang it made. I remember that Katara was trying to take a nap and the sound woke her up. She threw an absolute fit. Called me every name under the moon and some more names just for good measure. She went after how I looked, how I acted, how dumb boys were, how terrible it was to live with me."

Here Sokka half smiles, one side turned up at the edge. It's a little sad and a little fond at the same time. Sokks sighs, "She insulted my hair a lot. I don't know why, but it was probably because I tried to wear it like Dad. Anyway, After I had gawked at her for a solid few minutes I started yelling back. Really got into it. I was so mean. We were tearing at each other like wolves. Then... but then I stopped yelling. At some point Katara had yelled that she hated me, and I stopped. I don't think she even noticed; that she said that or that I had stopped. She was caught up in her tirade because she was tired and grumpy, and because she couldn't keep it together anymore after things changed again. For the worse, again. Katara was twelve and at her breaking point and I don't begrudge her for it. I didn't, even back then when I was objectively pretty awful."

Sokka gets a faraway look to him that makes him pause. Zuko might not know a lot about feelings, but the regret in his eyes is one that Zuko know intimately. He gets the feeling that Sokka has never let himself talk about this before, and if he's been kind enough to indulge Zuko reminiscing about a little sister who was handed too much trauma, the least Zuko can do is nudge Sokka to do the same. It'll probably make him feel better.

"Sokka," Zuko calls gently. The boy blinks at him. "Don't stop in the middle. What happened after that?"

Sokka nods. He nods a little too long and has to clear his throat from the motion, but eventually he starts talking again. He still looks at the water instead of at Zuko.

"Katara told me she hated me and then kept going. I heard her say that and stopped. I just watched her without really hearing anything else, like an out of body experience almost. She was still talking but I just saw how her shoulders were shaking. Her eyes were burning but they were shiny. In that moment she looked young and alone, so when she jabbed a finger into my chest I grabbed her hand. I wrapped my fingers around hers and said 'Katara.' She actually looked at me then, I think, because she shut up so fast I heard her jaw click. I told her that even if she hated me I still loved her. She looked at me like I was speaking Whale-seal to her, so I told her she had said she hated me, but it was okay if she did, because I loved her anyway."

They sit in silence for a moment.

"She hugged me tightly, said sorry at least a hundred times. I think it was good that it happened though. We got a little better after that. Tried to talk about what was bothering us, or walk away when we thought we were about to get too mean."

Sokka turns away from the ocean. He stares at Zuko, looks him up and down for a moment. Zuko feels entirely see-through.

After a long moment Sokka says, “I don’t think I could handle being on the opposite side of a war from Katara. I don’t think I could, knowing that she needed support and wasn’t going to get it because I chose another side.”

Zuko blinks wide at the other boy, feeling struck. He doesn’t know where Sokka is going with this. The other boy continues.

“I think that you have every right to be upset, and that being so upset about this shows that you care, and showing her that you honestly care might be enough to help her in and of itself.”

“Sokka…”

“I don’t know your sister, but I know mine, and it would be enough for Katara. It might not fix Azula, but I'd bet a lot that it would help.”

Zuko doesn’t know what to say. He stares at his friend in bemusement but also a little bit of awe. A little bit of hope.

Sokka puts his hand on Zuko’s shoulder. Says, “You’ll never know unless you try. C’mon, let’s head back inside.”

They stand, and make their way back to the house, and as they walk together Zuko notices that the sun has completely set. It’s night now. Zuko looks up at the stars and feels nothing but resolution and Sokka’s body heat beside him.


End file.
